The FT's very obvious dislike of everything to do with the hard-left government that it clearly thinks Andy Burnham is creating is made clear in an editorial in that paper this morning.

As they say, after a patronising preamble:

[M]any of his initial signals have not been encouraging.

They do not like the prospect of "rent freezes, along with cutting bus fares and energy bills." As they note:

While such measures might cheer some voters, more intervention in private markets will do little to revive business confidence, and additional spending will put further strain on the UK's already stretched public finances.

Then they get to their real paranoia, which is, of course, centred on the prospect that the well-paid FT hierarchy might be asked to pay a bit more tax. As they put it:

It is also concerning that Burnham has left the door open to raising the top rate of income tax from 45p to 50p at what is set to be a pivotal Budget in the autumn.  ...

[R]aising the top rate would only hamper some of the UK's most productive workers further after years of freezes to income tax thresholds, without raising significant additional revenues.

Given it is very apparent that the wealthy both underpay tax in the UK compared to income and that there is no evidence that they are more productive than anyone else, but might be more successful at extracting rents, which is nothing like the same thing, this unsubstantiated statement deserves scorn on the basis of its very obvious self-interest all too obviously dressed up as faux economics.

They then, using the logic of the household analogy that they think governs government finance, link taxes and spending in ways that reality cannot justify, and suggest:

One way to avoid such speculation would be to set out a credible plan for reducing public spending, particularly the spiralling expenditure on disability benefits. This would help to contain upward pressure on UK borrowing costs.

These supposedly "highly productive" people do, it seems, have one simple plan. It is that they be enriched at cost to those in society with the least, whether that be measured by opportunity, inclusion, or economic well-being.

At the same time, they regret that the chance to end the so-called "triple lock" on pensions, which continues to marginally improve the well-being of the most vulnerable elderly people in our society, has already been foregone by Andy Burnham, who, unlike the FT editors, seems to have some understanding of just what struggling to live on a pension of just £12,550 (or less, if you are older) is like.

And they warn:

When it comes to the Budget itself, Burnham's Labour should not repeat the error of Starmer and his chancellor Rachel Reeves by treating business as a bottomless resource for tax revenues. It should avoid heaping yet more costs on to companies and investors, for example by imposing mooted increases in capital gains tax.

The demand is very obvious, given its source. Capital gains are unearned income. Of course the FT thinks that they must be privileged for tax purposes over income from work, on which the real rate is well over double that on capital gains once national insurance is taken into account. After all, as the FT no doubt thinks, how else is the privilege of wealth to be maintained in this country if it is not undertaxed?

And why do they say all this? This is their argument;

Above all, the incoming government needs to develop a plan for growth that revives animal spirits in the private sector, rather than Burnham's push for a more interventionist state that harks back to the pre-1980s era.

And they add:

Britain's new leader has described his philosophy as “business-friendly socialism”. If he wants to take the country forward, he needs to lean more on the business-friendly elements than on the statist sentiments he has emphasised around his arrival in Downing Street.

I do seriously wonder on which planet the FT editors live. For the last 45 years we have seen government after government in the UK seek to revive the "animal spirits" in the UK's private sector. Taxes have been cut massively. Grants have been given. Investment partnerships and deals have been signed.  Enterprise zones and low and even tax-free zones have been created. Money has been put into infrastructure to help businesses, rather than to build houses for people. And have the animal spirits of business been revived? No, of course not.

Why not? That is because what the UK private sector, whether that be business or banking and finance, is not the slightest bit interested in adding value to the UK economy. In fact, it is so long ago that it did anything of that sort that most of those who think they are engaged in business in the UK have long forgotten what doing so might mean. The only thing they are interested in is extracting value.

They "invest" in opportunities to extract rents, but not in creating added value, let alone employment opportunities.

The only engineering they know anything about is of the financial variety.

And as to profit, they think earning money from charging interest creates profit, when in economic terms it does not.

As for animal spirits, they direct them towards conspicuous consumption.

But of innovation, they know nothing. That requires thought, effort, and the type of risk-taking they would very much rather avoid.

The FT is living in its own little fantasy world, writing editorials wholly unrelated to reality when it publishes nonsense of this sort.

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